The eclipse festivals have been a popular event on the trance music scene for close to two decades now. Previous total solar eclipse events have been celebrated by music fans the world over as they seek to merge their love of music with the spectacular experience of a full solar eclipse. This year the event is to be held from Nov 10th to 16th 2012 near the town of Cairns, in Queensland Australia. The solar eclipse will occur early morning of the 16th. The team behind the event includes management from well established and respect music festivals including Australia's Rainbow Music Festival , The Symbiosis Festival from USA and the UK's massively popular Glade Festival.

This year will see a vast lineup of musicians, artists, authors, poets and let's not forget all the wonderful food and craft retailers too. Even if you don't hear any music, the sheer amount of performance art, workshops, market stalls and organic food on offer is more than enough to satisfy even the most discerning of festival goers.

One of the highlights of the festival this year will surely be the appearance of psychedelic artists Alex Grey who will be launching his new book "Net Of Being" at the event. Along with Alex there are a number of amazing artistings represented including international psychedelic and visionary artists Android Jones, Amanda Sage, Andy Ross, Andy Thomas, Luke Brown and Martina Hoffman.

As far as the music is concerned expect nothing less than a phenomenal lineup of the world's best trance and chillout bands, DJs and producers. I won't go too far into the trance side of things here as I am more into the psychedelic ambient sounds.

So with that in mind here are some of the ambient,dub and chillout groups you can expect to hear at this year's event :

An-Ten-Nae

Andrew Till

Beats Antique

Bird of Prey

Banco de Gaia

Birds of Paradise

Chris Deckker

Circuit Bent

Deep Fried Dub

Ganga Giri

Dub FX and Flower fairy

Dysphemic and Miss Eliza

EPROM

Eskmo

Freq Nasty

Desert Dwellers

GAUDI

Heyoka

Kaya Project

Kalya Scintilla

Supercozi

Outersect

Terra Nine

Whitebear

Vladislav Delay

Zen Lemonade

Solar Fields

Hypnagog

Kaminanda

Random Rab

Richard Devine

Spoonbill

Sunmonx

Temple Step Project

Tipper

Quite a tasty lineup I'm sure you would agree. I am especially pleased to see Solar Fields, Kaminanda, Gaudi and Bird Of Prey all making the long haul flight to Australia this year. Aussie fans have been waiting quite a while to see those artists bring their unique sounds down.

So you might be wondering how much does all this cost ? 7 days of international music, art and performance can't be cheap to put on. Well according to the eclipse web site these are the current ticket prices :

$250 Super Early Bird 1
$300 Early Bird 2
$350 Early Bird 3
$400 General Presale
$500 On the gate

Given that we are fast approaching the event date you can probably assume that early bird tickets have all been snapped already so if you are still keen on making it to the party then you might have to fork out for a general presale or on the gate ticket. Yikes ... $500 !!!

Actually I just check the ticket office and there are still a number of EB3 tickets available at $350 AUD . That's not too bad - especially if you plan to stay for a week. For international travelers there are a number of world wide ticket outlines where you can acquire tickets too.

If you need more info relating to travel, camping or health and safety I recommend checking out the Eclipse website. It is very well well designed and informative with plenty of FAQ information to read up on.